The overview of the project was to successfully run a mock campaign and participate in a mock debate, based on being truthful in candidates’ policies. This meant not only doing research on their ideas and views for the future, but putting it together in an opening statement, video, and infographic that showcased where the candidates were right and wrong, realistic and unrealistic. We learned how media and rhetoric play a role in a campaign, how to fact-check thoroughly, and how to work as a functioning campaign team. The first thing we did when we started our 2016 Election Project was go onto the site Isidewith.com, and take the quiz to see which presidential candidate our view most aligned with. It was a good opportunity to see, no matter which candidate we researched for the project, which candidate best represented our feelings and opinions. After that, once we knew where our views were, it was easier to research different candidates and compare them side by side. It was also easier when we were approached with the question of what it means to be patriotic. What did it mean to be patriotic? We looked at several events from history and practiced seeing them in a historical perspective, how the people in this time periods would have viewed certain things. Maybe these people saw things as patriotic that we today are appalled by. This made it easier to take that same frame of mind and apply it to today. Why do certain people support certain candidates? What do those candidates offer them? To me, being patriotic is doing what is best for the most people in a country. It is supporting and loving your country despite its flaws, and actively working to get rid of those flaws. Being patriotic is not blindly following your country, it's leaders, or the the prevalent thoughts in that country. It is challenging those leaders and ideals and thinking how you can constantly improve. Once we asked ourselves these questions, we did research on the 4 main candidates and looked carefully at their policies and the things they said, pulling from interviews, debates, fact-checking sites, and their website. We looked at what it meant to be an educated and informed voter. Many people look at once source for their information, and so by looking at several sources and comparing them, we were able to see where candidates were not always being truthful, or where their ideas were not thorough or realistic. We really learned, the hard way, what it means to be an informed voter. It takes work, past just fact-checking sites. We had to really look into the ideas of candidates and decide for ourselves if that was what we really wanted in a president. One of the first things we did was find an issue in America that we felt deeply about and write a letter to the future president about that issue in 500 words or less. This helped us identify what was important to us, practice our writing skills, and voice our opinions about things we cared about. You can find my Letter to the Future President about sex education in America here: Outline: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CR5RxawzcqP_DrUC2PLjW3VvDXZ_47N8Qhb0OAqkbO8/edit?usp=sharing First Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1edb6He-P8cJuiePY5jWZGPYWZEJASaAjmQqUOhOk4V4/edit?usp=sharing Second Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pzfj4DN7OMPfFbqIO_YkCehYMc0N-4JeougwCvJtZRY/edit?usp=sharing Final Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SOdivw9I63xVz6EfuvGoVeWkSo4QNER2DGQAqZSG-Bw/edit?usp=sharing Once we started our campaign, we had to do several things before we wrote our opening statements and gave voters the facts about the candidates. First, we had to find information about our given candidates and a specific topic in politics. My subject was Jill Stein on China. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LTE7zq1x2bKnBiC6dJj4ap5tNel5Mwium-GXx-FCvUA/edit?usp=sharing Then we had to write an opening statement and fact check bits and pieces from it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J9QUC8pPXGnTZgnsgJv1mHkvvY1RnoUwM0Qsj6trsDk/edit?usp=sharing Our opening statement was a work in progress and many stages, starting off short and rough, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vItj4k4P36KIobf-f2JEgr9Bj3h9G7mRs9wYkW_5Kbw/edit?usp=sharing but by the end we had written an opening statement that encompassed the most important aspects of our candidates position: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-0cSWSgsPClW3Y7b6M4oxc9qhrkh8h55FErxclisQiQ/edit?usp=sharing Before we dove into giving voters factual information about our candidates, we practiced fact-checking them using credible sources and multiple points of view. We did this by taking quotes from a presidential debate and finding out if it was true or not. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f8rER4P5PQmvJ5TFtTyiYbMp4YuOBTfVPrpa36t8mKg/edit?usp=sharing The only issue with our opening statements was that they were written from the point of view of our candidates-- meaning they weren’t necessarily factual or realistic, only truthful to their point of view. To make up for this, we created fact-checking videos and infographics to go along with our research and inform voters in an unbiased manner. First, we gather our information into categories-- China belonging in Foreign Policy-- and put all our fact-checking in one place, which we would then use to create videos as our #TruthCampaignAds. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JSGLJrXFWNt5kLmv8IF_3-Gkg6Dnj_ESjbOdC3b-CWU/edit?usp=sharing Our final products to fact-check the presidential candidates were a video and an infographic. For our Truth Campaign Ad, we had to plan out or video on a storyboard to figure out which facts were most important and which ones didn't need to be included. Our fact-checking video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfDAh5rbHHM&feature=em-upload_owner Our storyboard: Our infographic: Our goal was to provide truthful information to voters. Did we do that? What did this project mean to me? This project shows how much it takes to be an educated and informed voter. Too often voters only receive information from one source- television and news. This often means that they are only see biased perspectives, and perspectives that most align with theirs. Depending on which news channel you get a story from, the blame for something falls on the group or candidate you oppose. Liberal news channels talk most about negativity surrounding the Republican party, and more conservative news channels target Democratic figures. This is extremely harmful when it comes to the future of our country. When you only get your information from once source, your political views become warped. To be an educated voter, you need to reach for different sources-- what are conservative news channels say? What are liberal news channels saying? What are the candidates saying? What are experts saying? What is history saying? When you look at all these sources, you can put together what is true or a lie, what is realistic or not. A candidate can say one thing and mean it, but you need to look at an expert opinion on if that is realistic or not, or look at our past and see if ideas like that have worked before.
Like I said, being an educated voter is tough, and this project showcases it. It as hard to complete this project, specifically when your candidate, Jill Stein, has one major focus-- climate change. As a member of the Green Party, it is understandable that protecting our environment is her most important issue, but because she has no political background, she has not had the time to form well thought-out stances on many topics, such as China. I really only had one interview from 2012 to work with. There weren’t people writing that they supported her stance on China, or opposed it, or even fact-checking it. I had to create an opening statement that was at first very short, and expand it later. What we basically learned over the course of this project is how vital it is to fact-check, but we also had to figure out how to work together as a large team. There were twelve of us. It was challenging to make sure everyone was on the same page and we all knew what had to be done. So further than on a personal level, academically it wasn't something I'd ever done before. I had never worked in a group larger than four. Right now, in terms of the American presidential election, I’m scared. Very few people fact-checked our candidates, and many people did not vote. This means that our president did not win by popular vote or by running a truthful campaign. He won by running a campaign based on fear and hatred. and Donald Trump is unlike any president we have seen before, and he has no regard for his political party. But I’m less scared for him as president, and more scared about his supporters. No matter how many people say he will never be able to pass the things he has proposed, the fact of the matter is that his supporters have already started. His supporters have already started throwing slurs around, celebrating his victories with disgusting displays of xenophobia. There have been countless stories already of boys and men who have said things to the girls and women around them, and their excuse was basically, If the president can do it, why can’t I? Suicide rates among LGBTQ+ youth have risen since his election. It terrifying to think that even if Trump will never be able to build a wall, his supporters will continue to treat immigrants and people of color as if that wall was always up. Despite all this, I don’t think it’s logical to throw your hands up and accept that this is the state of our country, that Donald Trump and Mike Pence are what represent the values of the American government. They did not win by popular vote, so why should the majority of the American people bend to someone they did not elect? I think the only option is to keep fighting. All the progress in our country cannot be allowed to be put to a halt. The protests and riots and walkouts and rallies that ur country has seen since his election are beautiful. We constantly glorify revolutions and wars and change in our past, and that is what this is. This is the American people standing up for the country they want to see. My far-fetched hope is the the Electoral College sees this and changes the way the cast their ballots. My realistic hope is that these protests do not stop, that the American people do not stop speaking up, and that we do not allow the Trump administration to break us. Our Exhibition night was also known as “Voter Info Night” AKA the night we finally informed voters on all we head learned. It was finally time to get everything out there and make sure the adults that came knew what they were doing when they filled out their ballot. This should have been simple, and while it was a successful night, I also learned that many people didn't want to learn about every candidate on every issue. Some completely ignored Trump, already having made an opinion about him, or didn't stop at the Jill Stein table but stopping at one of the two major candidates, never mind that Stein was on the ballot. How could they brush her aside without knowing anything about her ideas? I think when people really listened to all of us was the next Monday, when we had our full live debate in front of several classes in the school. That, to me, was more of a success that Exhibition Night. I say that because everyone had to listen to us, so everyone got all the information that we had collected. When it came down to vote within the school, people voted based on the content and the policies they most aligned with rather than based on the candidates they knew before the debate. t.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|